SIN Chew Publishing Group - The Whore Story

If the holy scriptures go by different names - Holy Bible, Quran, Torah or the Sutras - then robbers, thieves and liars speak only through the SIN Chew group of newspapers. Why? The giant Chinese media publishing house in Malaysia and Papua New Guinea work on the tried and tested business concept modelled after the world's oldest profession.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

By I Love Malaysia

Yes, SIN Chew daily, Guang Ming, Nanyang Siang Pau, China Press - all controlled by Sarawak tycoon Tan Sri Tiong Hiew King's Rimbunan Hijau - are the antithesis of what good journalism is all about. While others stand for objectivity and accuracy, for the SIN Chew group, spreading lies and character assasination is a corporate culture.

Of late, it has been interfering in the internal affairs of MCA - the first time in history a vernacular newspaper is involved in trying to shape the landscape of a political party. One example was when SIN Chew Daily ran a scathing attack on Ong Tee Keat, calling him "the worst president in MCA's history". Published in its Nov 2 issue, the timing was clearly to influence the outcome of the MCA Central Committee meeting to endorse the Greater Unity Plan on the same day.

But why is the SIN Chew group so adamant in departing from the basic tenets of the Fourth Estate? To understand, one needs to go back a little bit in history, more specifically to 2001. At that time, MCA, under Ling Liong Sik, acquired a stake in Nanyang Publishing group. The deal, besides to enrich the pockets of Tun Dr Ling, was a backdoor, well-planned move by Tan Sri Tiong to allow his SIN Chew group to take over its rival, hence forming an effective monopoly of Malaysia's Chinese newspaper industry in the Peninsula.

But one man was out to stop the takeover. His name is Ong Tee Keat, then a political pariah and head of the MCA Youth. He called an EGM in his wing then which resoundingly rejected Tun Ling's decision to acquire Nanyang group and then sell it off to Tan Sri Tiong with a handsome commission to boot.

Following the ruckus created by the MCA Youth wing, the plan to form a monopoly of Chinese newspapers in Peninsula faltered, much to the dismay of Tan Sri Tiong and CC Liew, SIN Chew's MD. In fact, the newspaper on May 29, 2001, even issued a media statement which denied it had planned to take over Nanyang. All this, of course, was just a show when eventually, Liong Sik's protege and successor, Ong Ka Ting sold off MCA's stake to SIN Chew (http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/7/business/20080407102514&sec=business).

But the damage had been done on Ong Tee Keat. Since then, he's become top of CC Liew and Tan Sri Tiong's hate-list. The problem is compounded because CC Liew and Ong Ka Ting have been close buddies since the latter was a Parliamentary Secretary in the Home Ministry, who often called up editors on what stories to run or not to. In fact, Ka Ting was already known as Super Editor then.

(In fact, Ka Ting was the one who influenced Dr Mahathir to instruct Hong Leong boss Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan to sell off Nanyang's stake to MCA. Ka Ting did so by selectively translating the news item and brought it to Dr M's attention. And then Ka Ting blamed Tan Sri Quek's newspapers for BN's by-election defeat in Lunas due to the Vision School issue as well as portraying Tan Sri Quek as a crony of Anwar Ibrahim.)

When Ka Ting became the MCA president, he further cultivated Tan Sri Tiong, CC Liew and Kuik Cheng Kang, the white-haired senior editor from SIN Chew by giving them exclusive stories, including Cabinet decisions that made the government look bad. This was done largely through a junior reporter, Ms Kuok, who had an office to file her stories in the Housing and Local Government Ministry, where Ka Ting was boss.

During MCA's Team A-Team B crisis, Kuik would assign Ms Kuok for Team A and give prominence to the faction in the paper. Those who returned from press conferences by Team B, especially those held by Ong Tee Keat, were often grilled on whether they had gotten their facts right, so much so that they did not want to cover such events anymore. For his effort, Kuik was given two houses - a banglo and a semi-D - in Puchong by Ka Ting, courtesy of IOI Bhd's Tan Sri Lee Chin Seng, Ka Ting's good friend.

With SIN Chew now firmly in control of the Chinese newspapers, instructions went out that Tee Keat must be nailed at all costs. CC Liew did this through his lover of three decades, NC Siew, the Deputy MD of SIN Chew. Day in, day out, the stable of newspapers churn out lies that portray Tee Keat as the worst president the MCA ever had. It even picked up poison-pen letters attacking the MCA president, which CC Liew and Leong Tang Chong (former MCA legal bureau head) themselves wrote, and treated them as the gospel truth.

When Chua Soi Lek was attacking Tee Keat, SIN Chew put the disgraced ex-Health Minister on a pedestal and would have conferred him a Sainthood if it could. But when CSL joined forces with Tee Keat, he became the most reviled man in MCA since Tee Keat and one would even think that SIN Chew forgot he had a sex scandal before the Greater Unity Plan came into existence.

Before the October 10 EGM, pro-CSL quarters who wanted to take out anti-OTK ads in the newspapers approached CC Liew for discounts. But when the SIN Chew assistant senior manager for advertising refused to give discounts, CC Liew had her demoted and transferred to SIN Chew's office in Muar. Her successor learnt from the experience and gave out massive discounts without even being told when pro-Liow groups took out similar ads in the newspapers.

Another example was the group's treatment of the controversy surrounding The Star's decision to develop its piece of land which now houses the MCA-linked Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) premises in Section 16, PJ. It is an unwritten rule that newspapers do not attack each other as a matter of courtesy. It's the same for other professions like lawyers and doctors. But then, if SIN Chew group had even the slightest shred of courtesy, Tan Sri Tiong's Bakun Dam would be filled with gold to be distributed to all poor Malaysians.

Guang Ming Daily, a member of the SIN Chew group not only ran a false story on page 1, it even carried the picture of The Star's headquarters in Section 13 - a building which has no direct link whatsoever with the controversy. It spun lies that UTAR students would be evicted, but the truth was The Star was going to build a larger campus for the students to accommodate the university's growing needs (http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/political-news/153750-star-to-house-utar-3-radio-stations-in-section-13.html).

But of course SIN Chew, which was closed down during Operasi Lallang in 1987, was not interested in the truth. It only wanted to promote the agenda of the MCA Ong Brothers to topple Tee Keat. And helping them is SIN Chew executive director Rita Sim. The former Wanita MCA deputy sec-gen is a lackey of Ka Ting who appointed her to the SIN Chew post. Because she is the ED, she has a say on how SIN Chew is run.

During his tenure, Ka Ting also appointed Rita as deputy chairman of MCA's think-tank, INSAP and gave her a litany of directorships in public listed companies. And unlike others who are more subtle in the attacks against Tee Keat, Rita made no bones about her dislike for the MCA president, penning articles in The Edge Weekly and the NST attacking the political party which made her what she is today. In her recent piece in the NST, she even made criminally false representation that she was from INSAP when she had already quit the post months earlier. Her falsehood was revealed by bloggers, including Ti Lian Ker (http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/18/nation/5131236&sec=nation).

Clearly, the SIN Chew group had an evil agenda to topple Ong Tee Keat. It practices Journalism of Prostitution. It doesn't care about what is right or wrong anymore. For the sake of the Ong Brothers, it is prepared to bring journalism to a whore new low.